What do the stars feel when they look at Us?

Chapter 9: The holidays were over and so were we

Linda's mom is an artist. She travels a lot. She takes important photographs of less important things. Things of which people didn't even know that they wanted to see them.

Their living room walls were filled with them. Linda's dad showed them to everyone who came to visit.

Linda told me that every night before going to bed he would spend hours just looking at them. Reading through every magazine in which her pictures were published.

I spent a lot of time not understanding anything he did. He seemed so irrational. A little bit like a small child that would go around at family gatherings showing everyone how many wooden blocks his tiny yellow excavator could hold.

It took me some time. It took me less time over time. But probably still a lot.

It was when they came back from Romania and went to check in with my mom and me.

Linda was standing right behind him, in front of our door. Her hair was braided in a way I had never seen before. The lines of eyeliner had vanished. The slight hint of cigarette smoke had disappeared. The rough filter that had been laid over her rain covered face had evaporated into thin air.

She was gorgeous. A word Pedro told me to think about. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

As I kept repeating it in my mind it felt like it replaced her entire name.

Linda's dad grinned from ear to ear. The wrinkles on his face were glowing. As if, during their time in Romania, significant parts of his life that he had been trying to replace with staring at paintings and reading magazines, reappeared and made him whole.

It took me some time. It took me less time over time. But probably still a lot, to figure him out.

He missed her.

-

Eventually, I had reached a point at which my thoughts kept repeating themselves. I had thought so much about..., just everything, in such a short amount of time that I started thinking about all of it all over again.

The problem with that was that certain thoughts I liked the most kept repeating themselves more than others.

Way way more.

So I got stuck in loops, sitting around the in construction memorials of the soon to be over holidays.

It's weird. Like..., what's being looped. The contents of my mind.

I'm not a fan of talking about it. To Pedro or my mom. I tried to, though.

But it feels like something I should be ashamed of. Something I'm not supposed to think about. Because I never did before.

I don't like the word that is connected to the action.

It's a word full of feelings.

Let me phrase it like this – I thought about how my lips could touch the lips of another person.

Yeah, there it is.

The constant repetition of an unfamiliar image reverberating from the back of my head to both of my eyes and back and forth until the sun sets and I need to walk home.

And sometimes..., sometimes I dare to think of Linda at the same time.

-

The Linda in front of my doorsteps didn't seem like the Linda that, from time to time, crossed my mind.

Pedro had told me that he thought I acquired a certain level of empathy.

He told me it meant understanding people's emotions.